Landscape Initiatives: An Opportunity for Impact at Scale

'𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘴𝘵, 𝘨𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘳, 𝘨𝘰 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳.’ - 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘣

Landscape initiatives, and corporate participation there-in, are on the rise. These multi-stakeholder initiatives operationalize a landscape approach in a particular landscape, by setting common goals and taking collective action while reconciling different social, environmental and economic interests. They take place at a 'landscape scale’ i.e. at the scale of a defined ecological, socioeconomic, or administrative area, such as a watershed, an ecosystem or a jurisdictional boundary.

Over the past few months, together with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, we delved into landscape approaches and the resulting on the ground initiatives for a variety of different commodities and geographies. The resulting write-up can be found here. For more context and links to related publications, see here.

For the past decade, to promote more sustainable forest and land management practices, landscape initiatives have mostly focused on terrestrial commodities such as of cocoa, soy and palm oil; the application for seafood, in aquaculture or fishery production systems, is relatively new and nascent. And while there are differences, the lessons learned from landscape initiatives for terrestrial commodities are valuable for the seafood sector as well.

What does an effective landscape initiative entail? Until recently, this question could not be answered unequivocally. The multitude of commodity agnostic landscape models available offer varying guidance. ISEAL and 20+ other prominent practitioners recognized this need for greater clarity and took the lead to formalize the key definitions as well as establish four core criteria for impactful landscape initiatives:

1. Scale: they operate at a landscape level

2. Governance: they are governed by a multi-stakeholder process or platform

3. Collective action: they set collective goals and actions

4. Monitoring: they manage a collective monitoring and reporting framework

Across the board, and similarly recommended by ISEAL et al., we found that the three key interrelated topics that landscape initiatives address broadly include:

🌳 Environmental protection and conservation,

👥 Social inclusion, and

🏭 Sustainable production.

Landscape initiatives are a work in progress. Among other things, we need ‘smarter’ goals, better monitoring & verification, and more sharing of progress and lessons learned. Nevertheless, they provide a promising framework for impact at scale.